Capitol Hill is a unique community — in size, composition and more. Located directly east of the namesake U.S. Capitol, it straddles D.C.’s Northeast and Southeast quadrants. An advisory neighborhood commissioner called the population profile a “bell curve” — with lots of young and lots of old residents, but not many residents in between.

Just blocks south of the Capitol, a proposal to do construction work to expand a tunnel used by freight trains has gotten residents upset. Many plan to take action against the proposal, by CSX Corp., and fear for the health and safety of their children.

Elsewhere on the Hill, two businesses have been negatively affected by a down economy. Capitol Hill Books and Capitol Hill Bikes have seen business drop as a result of the recession.

Finally, throughout the neighborhood, residents have flocked to community blogs and other social media Web sites to communicate issues of concern as well as to meet new neighbors.

With crossed legs, they rock back and forth to the melodic recitation that fills the air. One boy rests his hands on his head. His eyes reveal the concentration of grasping for verse after verse.

Mohammad Nahavandi, a guide on a personal journey to tackle a great feat of memory, paces back and forth with arms crossed and ears listening intently as a student sits by his desk reciting. Nahvandi’s eyes stray to his Qur’an from time to time, double-checking the words that have become second nature.

His students work towards reciting roughly 600 pages of Arabic text that millions look to for guidance.

In the Hifzh school, students of all different ages, use daily recitation to memorize the Qur’an, the holy book of Islam, from cover to cover. The program is part of the larger Dar-us-Salaam Muslim community in College Park, Md. The school is comprised of one class for females and two for males, with about 10 to 12 students per class.

“During the day students are working on different aspects: They are memorizing what they learned that day, they are reviewing what they have learned in the past, they are reviewing what they memorized in the recent days so that they are able to transfer it from their short-term memory to their longer-term memory,” said Haroon Baqai, director of the Hifzh school.

Unlike other religious texts, there are no different versions of the Qu’ran.

“The miraculous thing of the Qur’an is that it is preserved for 1,400 years, letter by letter, diacritic by diacritic, vowel by vowel, so you can’t just … explain it in your own words,” Baqai said. “You can explain a verse, but you have to recite it exactly how it is written, without even a slight difference in how it is written.”

Mohammad Nahavandi, a teacher at the Hifzh for four years, explained why Muslims stress the importance of exact recitation.

“We cannot alter the words of Allah, these are his words these are the rules and laws and everything is explained to us here,” said Nahavandi. “If we change one letter it could change the meaning, if generation after generation starts changing words we could end up with an entirely different book.”

In addition to the Qur’an in its original Arabic form, a copy of an English translation is also studied to provide meaning, Nahavandi said. The majority of students do not speak Arabic prior to starting the program.

In Islam, the English translation is not seen as an authentic version of the Qur’an, because it is felt that translation out of the rich Arabic vernacular causes loss of important meaning.

Some may ask how students find meaning in a text they cannot understand. Nahavandi said memorization includes a two-part process. Students first take a class once a week on the implications of certain verses, and secondly begin to go through word-by-word and translate the meaning. Eventually students start to build a vocabulary and have the ability to piece together some meaning.

Most students said the requirement to put into practice teachings from their studies into daily life is harder than the actual process of memorization.

Shaheed Twyman, 13, a student who recently completed the program, said this challenge often has to do with everyday habits that are hard to break.

“In the book it says do not backbite, like talk about people behind their back,” Twyman said. “So I used to do that, but now I stopped because I understand what the teachings are saying.”

The participation in the Hifzh is not an obligation for every Muslim. Therefore, it often is a large personal decision by either student or a student and their parents to enroll in the program. Musfika Hossain, 17, a third-year student, said she always wanted to be involved in Qur’an memorization, and her parents encouraged it.

“It has been a dream of mine ever since I was young to memorize the Qur’an,” Hossain said. “I always thought finishing the Qur’an was a big accomplishment and duty in my life.”

Since the normal school day in the Hifzh is spent working on their memorization, students must keep up with traditional academics through homeschooling.

Baqai said the students’ general educational progress should not be slowed, if parents maintain discipline with homeschooling, including using the many school breaks to catch up on schoolwork.

“When you are memorizing 600 pages letter by letter, vowel by vowel, your brain has become so sharp you have made your brain so strong that you are able to go through other subjects very successfully,” said Baqai. “When I was memorizing my grades definitely improved.”

With completion of the program comes the transition back to traditional school. Fatima Khan, 12, has been enrolled in the Hifzh since she was 9. Khan said that once she finishes the program she would be entering a public school, the first time she will be educated in a secular institution.

“I want to go to college and I have to meet people who may not have the same beliefs,” Khan said. “I shouldn’t go there blind. I have to get used to people who are different so when I go to college I am prepared and not shocked.”

In addition to continuing this education, Hayat Marso, 16, who has been studying the Qur’an for almost two years, said that one of the main reasons he was interested in the program was so that he could share his learning with others.

“Sometimes in the Metro, some people come and ask, ‘Are you Muslim?’ and I say, Yeah,’ and they say, OK, tell me what Islam says,” Marso said. “So I have to tell them, in memorizing the Qur’an it is my duty to teach and tell what Islam says.”

While completion of the Qur’an is a miraculous feat, most students stressed that its memorization has greater purpose.

“There is a lot more you can do, this is just a small aspect. Some people make it out to be such a big accomplishment but it is really the beginning of a lot more of what is to come,” said Abrar Lohani, 20, a third year student in one of the male classes.

“You should never see it as the biggest thing. You shouldn’t think of it as, OK, I have washed my hands and now I am done with it, there is always more to learn.”

In March 2010, the twenty-third decennial U.S. Census will be taken. But what does this mean for a community, like Prince William County in Virginia, that has a very high population of illegal immigrants? Even though Census workers take a lifetime oath to protect the confidentiality of all information gathered, should undocumented people trust them and fill out the forms?

Among the Latino community, opinions are varied as to the safety of allowing themselves to be counted. Churches, too, are split between encouraging their Hispanic members to participate as a civic duty or to shun the Census. Long before the 2010 Census was being discussed, controversial local ordinances affecting illegal immigrants created distrust between them and the government. Those laws allowed police officers to check the immigration status of people arrested for minor offenses and deport them if they lacked documentaiotn. As a result, the Latino community has its doubts that the Census is for their own good.

Kevin’s fraternity brothers used to joke that he had gotten a business degree just to wash cars – until he told them about the money he made. Seven years ago, he decided he was happier in the ’hood than on the Hill, so he sold his regular car wash near Eastern Market and invested in a mobile operation.

Now, you can find him and his crew of “misfits” on the corner of 5th Street and Florida Avenue Northeast, seven days a week from dawn till dusk. His only advertisements are his immaculate Escalade, which he washes every day, and the continuous hum of the power washer.

In the past few years, Kevin has seen this Northeast Washington neighborhood change from an open-air drug market to an up-and-coming annex of Capitol Hill. Meanwhile, his employees have made their own transitions, giving up criminal pasts and living up to new responsibilities.

Kevin says that gentrification has had little effect on his business, except that police officers – who he says used to pat them down and search their vans for guns and drugs – now come by their off-duty hours for a wash and a wax. The customers keep coming just as they used to, and Kevin and his misfits keep ignoring the strange looks from passersby who are quick to make assumptions based on how they dress and act.

A rail tunnel that many didn’t even know exists has suddenly become the center of debate in the Capitol Hill neighborhood, as a proposed construction project could potentially cause disruptions – such as noise, dust and potential traffic nightmares.

CSX Corp., a major East Coast freight railway, hopes to expand their century-old Virginia Avenue Tunnel — a tunnel which, along with the Southeast Freeway, serves as the de facto separator between Capitol Hill and Navy Yard neighborhoods.

The residents — the recently gentrified neighborhood is populated with many young professionals with young children — aren’t too happy about the prospects of the added noise, dust and potential traffic nightmares.

Kirsten Oldenburg, an advisory neighborhood commissioner for ANC 6B, whose single-member district would be affected by the project, said increased freight capacity is a “hard benefit for people to grasp onto.”

The project is part of the National Gateway — a program that is designed to increase the flow of freight throughout CSX’s network. According to CSX officials, the tunnel is a major chokepoint for trains that causes delays throughout the network.

“The issue is that we are going to have, over the next 20 years, an increase in freight of 70 percent,” said Bob Sullivan, a CSX spokesman.

The project calls for raising the roof of the tunnel, which will allow double-stacked trains to use it. A second track will also be added to the single-tracked tunnel.

In order for the work to proceed, Virginia Avenue Southeast will have to be torn up. Trains will be diverted onto an adjacent runaround track, which will be in an open trench, railroad officials said. The right of way on Virginia Avenue will be unusable, but cross streets will be passable, thanks to proposed temporary bridges that will span the construction area.

Construction is slated to begin in late 2011 at the earliest, said CSX’s Director of Federal Affairs Stephen Flippin. But that start date is dependent on financing, regulatory approval and an environmental review.

“The benefit that [CSX] is pushing is not fully understood,” Oldenburg said. “People don’t understand the cost of freight.”

A recent monthly ANC meeting had standing room only when many Capitol Hill residents came to voice their opposition to the proposed project during a presentation by Flippin.

“Residents are extremely involved in the community,” Oldenburg later said in an interview.

Some at the meeting said they had put down deposits on nearby condominiums under construction years before they had heard of this project — and now were concerned about their property values. One small business owner said her doggy day care center would become inaccessible during the project.

“The goal of that meeting was to more inform them what we were going to do,” Flippin said. “We wanted to hear their concerns. When we come back with our plan, we can give answers.”

On a recent, unseasonably warm Sunday, Tony Axam and his family were spending the afternoon on the playground at Garfield Park, which is located adjacent to the tunnel’s south portal. Axam echoed Oldenburg and added that community involvement is a function of the neighborhood’s recently changed demographics.

“You have a highly educated population on the Hill and you have people who believe that speaking up changes things,” he said.

For the Axams, eight-year residents of the neighborhood, their concerns largely had to do with the health and safety of their sons who go to Capitol Hill Day school, located across the street from the park and tunnel.

They anticipate that a lot of local concerns will be discussed on the Moms on the Hill listserv, which boasts over 5,000 subscribers and has been active in the past with similar issues. The group even hosts an annual barbecue at Garfield Park.

At the very least, Axam does not want to lose the park completely or have it in a state that is not safe for their sons to play in.

“This is like the best park on Capitol Hill,” he said.

Flippin said that his presentation at ANC 6B was one of over 20 preliminary, informational meetings that CSX has attended about the project. The company has been working around the District for more than 18 months.

“I don’t think anyone would be happy that their lives are going to be disrupted,” Flippin said. “People appreciate that we are alerting them to this early.”

Meredith Peruzzi can define herself easily, most of the time. She’s female, 28 years old, married, and a resident of Virginia. Labels get tricky, though, when you ask her whether she identifies as hearing or deaf. Peruzzi, a junior at Gallaudet University, said she struggles with this question frequently.

“I’ve always been a part of the deaf community,” said Peruzzi, who studied as a hearing student at Gallaudet before a scuba-diving accident left her hearing-imparied. “Everyone says it’s ironic that I was the most prepared for a hearing impaired life, and that I ended up deaf.”

In 1864, Abraham Lincoln officially signed the bill that created Gallaudet University. However, the school had started approximately ten years earlier when Amos Kendall donated two acres of land to create a school for the deaf and blind. Over the years, Gallaudet’s student body has grown in size. However, the mission to serve as a cultural center for the deaf has remained strong. According to Peruzzi, there is a definite split in the deaf community — either you went to Gallaudet or you did not.

Beyond Gallaudet, the deaf community as a whole, a divide based on a form of reverse discrimination exists, said Judy Fask, director of the deaf studies program at Holy Cross. Fask said hearing students in the deaf studies program are often taken aback that “audism,” or discrimination against the hearing, exists. Rather than sending deaf-studies students abroad, Fask sends her students to Gallaudet.

“Sending our students to Gallaudet puts them at a disadvantage,” Fask said, “By having them experience the language barrier, they can appreciate being in the minority.”

A Gallaudet spokeswoman, however, said there is no discrimination against hearing students and that information about hearing status is only collected for so the data is on hand. “It’s just for statistics, nobody really looks at the records” said Karen Evans of Gallaudet media relations.

Peruzzi agreed that there is not supposed to be a difference between hearing and deaf students – at least not officially. However, for the deaf community, “there is some sense of you’re in our world now,” she said.

This is especially ironic since Peruzzi began signing at the age of four, when she was hearing. Her babysitter was hearing impaired, and Peruzzi picked up American Sign Language as a means of communicating with her. Although she has siblings, none of them expressed the same interest in sign language.

Peruzzi graduated high school a year early and headed off to McDaniel College in Maryland. McDaniel, however, did not seem to fit her. After some time off, Peruzzi decided to enroll in Gallaudet University as a hearing student – upon enrolling at Gallaudet, she checked a box that said “hearing” on her permanent record. Despite this status, Gallaudet fit her. “This is the place that I was supposed to go the whole time,” Peruzzi said.

Hearing students enrolled full time at Gallaudet are referred to by the University as HUGS, or Hearing Undergraduate Students. These students complete a yearlong American Sign Language course, since many times the student doesn’t know sign language at all.

“There are coffee chats and group chats to encourage them to learn how to sign and practice. The new signers program really supports people who are not native signers,” said Evans, the school spokeswoman.

There are also a number of students who attend the university simply to learn sign language. Jen Sparrow, a student at American University, is one of those students. She enrolled in a 100-level course on sign language at the encouragement of some of her deaf friends. While a few students in her class were taking it out of necessity, as they were going deaf, most were hearing students.

“They were mostly hearing students and just wanted to learn a new skill,” said Sparrow.

In 2006, Peruzzi went scuba diving for the first time. A malfunction occurred, causing her eardrum to rupture and extensive damage to her inner ear. She lost ten decibels of hearing, officially qualifying her as hearing impaired.

Not to be deterred by a bad experience, Peruzzi signed up for scuba diving as an elective her first semester at Gallaudet. Again, her eardrums ruptured and damage was done to her inner ear. She was left even more impaired.

Or was she? Peruzzi was already enrolled at a school designed for the deaf and hearing impaired. She was fluent in sign language. Peruzzi made the choice after her second scuba accident to remove the “hearing” label from her permanent record. Yet, she’s not sure if she is hearing or not. She wears an aid, and works as a translator, something that she could not do if she was completely deaf.

As a deaf studies major, Peruzzi is forced to think about her identity every day. “We’re studying about ourselves. Everyone is a potential subject and there is a tendency to take the scholarly literature more personally because of it,” Peruzzi said.

The result? She feels pressure to decide, “Am I deaf or not?” It’s an interesting dynamic of having to prove that one is deaf enough. She frequently blogs about this difficulty saying, “Now think about being hard of hearing. You either can hear, or you can’t. You don’t get to have a middle ground. You are either hearing (but have some problems) or deaf (but hear really well). You have to pick one…”

She’ll readily admit that her journey to Gallaudet has not been a straightforward or easy one. However, finally she’s found the right place regardless of how she defines herself.

“Yes. That is me. Neither hearing nor Deaf. In the middle, ambiguous, indeterminate. It feels good to understand this,” she blogs in her most recent post titled, “Validation!”

When Susan Cummings first moved to Capitol Hill seven years ago, she explained that she often kept her head down while walking outside because the gentrifying community was so divided. She said you couldn’t necessarily go and ask to borrow a cup of sugar.

But recently, that’s changed. As embodied in a neighborhood blog authored by six volunteers called The Hill is Home, the new sense of community that has developed is, in Cummings’s words, “a revolution.”

“A revolution is going on in the sense that we are breaking down the thoughts people had in their heads about being black and being white. It’s like we’re all one group, all one family,” she said. “And in my opinion it is a remarkable change.”

Cummings explains that today, residents have developed ways to connect both online and in person.

“Now there are community events during the holidays such as the Fourth of July and Christmas. People are inviting other people over for dinner. Sometimes we’ll close off a few blocks and host community events,” Cummings says.

Cummings isn’t alone in her assessment. Others also agree that Capitol Hill is now a dynamic place to live, and residents are finding new ways to interact with one another while their community faces a demographic shift to a younger generation of new families.

Capitol Hill, a term synonymous with politics, is also a residential neighborhood whose residents have vastly different experiences than the politicians who work down the street.

Chris Grant, a resident of Capitol Hill for the past two years, says he thinks his neighborhood is the best in D.C.

“It is accessible to everything. Less than four blocks to anything; there are multiple markets, a library, a public pool, and places to go for a run. You will see moms with their babies and people walking their dogs. It is the most family friendly area in D.C.,” he says.

Grant also noted that most of the people living in the neighborhood share his optimism.

Despite his enthusiasm, he does acknowledge the phenomenon of gentrification in Capitol Hill. Both Cummings and Grant have noticed demographic shifts in their neighborhoods in recent years.

“In the past six years a lot of younger people are moving in,” Cummings says.

Tanner Holbrook, a former real estate agent, has lived in the Capitol Hill area on and off for the past six years. In many ways, he said, the arrival of young professionals to Capitol Hill is the neighborhood’s current form of gentrification – or at least the major demographic shift it faces.

“Most homeowners that have been here for a long time have homes that are worth an absolute fortune. They purchased their homes for $5,000 and can now sell them for half a million and use it for their retirement,” Holbrook says. He continues, “It becomes a younger neighborhood with people just starting families.”

Holbrook says that redevelopment in the neighborhood along the H Street corridor has attracted younger residents to the area.

“They are completely revamping H Street. It is the brand new Georgetown with all the bars, restaurants, and all kinds of fun things going on. They are really spiffing it up like you wouldn’t believe,” Cummings says.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the Capitol Hill neighborhood has seen an increase of 131 business establishments from 2001 to 2007.

In addition, the Business Patterns Survey offers some insights into ways in which the neighborhood has changed.The survey data also shows that there has been an increase of 4,592 employees in this time resulting in an additional $335-million in annual wages. Of the 131 new businesses, 70 of them are classified as professional, scientific, or technical services. This suggests that the types of jobs being created are ones that require college degrees or other certifications – jobs that might be attracting a younger and more highly educated demographic to the Capitol Hill area.

This has changed the way residents interact with one another. Some sociologists argue that the racial divide that Cummings first experienced when she moved to Capitol Hill has deteriorated because younger generations tend to hold more liberal views, and are more tolerant of minority groups. Others note that tensions diminished because the population simply grew more homogenous because the neighborhood, like many areas in D.C. over the last decade, became more white and higher-income.

One symbol of the new dynamic in the neighborhood is the rise of community blogs such as “The Hill is Home” (THIH).

According to the “About” segment of the blog, “The Hill is Home is an online news source designed to build community, connect neighbors, share news, and celebrate Washington, D.C.’s Capitol Hill neighborhood.”

Staffed by a volunteer corps of Capitol Hill residents, the THIH blog represents a new frontier in community interaction. Nichole Remmert is one of the six contributing authors for THIH and believes that such blogs facilitate community interaction.

“We often know more about what’s going on in our community than the traditional local media. Also, people in the neighborhood can more easily get in touch with us and interact with us, so they may be more inclined to let us know when something is developing than trying to reach out” to The Washington Post, she says.

Despite the blog’s contrast to traditional media, Remmert explains that the volunteer bloggers still fact-check and extensively edit all of their pieces. She also noted that they do their best to cover both sides of a story before publishing. However, Remmert openly acknowledges she doesn’t face the same constraints a traditional journalist might encounter.

“Speaking only for myself, my pieces almost always include my opinion – even if they’re newsier pieces. That’s one of the things that I like about writing for blogs – there’s room for more than just dry reporting,” Remmer says.

“There’s definitely comfort in the fact that we don’t bear the same sorts of burdens that folks writing for traditional news outlets do,” she said, explaining that, without being reckless or misleading, the blog does report second- or third-hand news..

Perhaps this is what puts blogs in a unique position to facilitate community interaction. Remmert herself finds it interesting that more and more local media are looking at blogs to get ideas for stories because – as she points out – “bloggers seem to know more about what’s going on in their communities.”

Blogs such as THIH are becoming increasingly more popular. According to Claudia Holwill, another contributing author for THIH, readership numbers have grown from 1,000 unique visitors in July to 6,700 unique visitors in November. Holwill notes that THIH uses an analytics site called Quantcast to track demographic information.

Quantcast “shows that the age of our readers skews a bit to the older side, is slightly more male than female, and tends to be more educated,” says Holwill.

The Quantcast data show that 84 percent of its readers are college educated, 91 percent are Caucasian, and 57 percent are between the ages of 18 and 49 (the remaining 43 percent are all above 50 years old).

These statistics correlate with evidence suggesting an influx of young professionals to Capitol Hill.

“The Hill is one of the most active communities in the city and has a reputation for being fairly tight-knit and quick to rally behind this or that cause., But strangely, there was no neighborhood blog before THIH,” explains Remmert.

Residents share a general feeling that the Capitol Hill community is embracing this new form of interaction.

“The community has been fantastically supportive,” said Remmert. She continues, “When I mention to people that I write for THIH, it’s amazing how often I hear, ‘I love THIH!’ ”

However, neither Cummings, Grant nor Holbrook utilize any of the community blogs. Grant said that he reads the monthly print publication the “Hill Rag.” Beyond that, all three of these residents primarily find out about community events and issues from neighbors and other residents.

“I love to write, and I love my neighborhood,” Remmert says. “If I can share some of my experiences and help some people in the neighborhood out at the same time, that’s great.”

Capitol Hill, the largest historic residential neighborhood in Washington, D.C., has many things to offer, but the economy is forcing some Hill business owners to fold.

Barracks Row, also known as 8th Street, was the first commercial center in the District of Columbia, according to BarracksRow.org, the Barracks Row Main Street Web site. Here, Washingtonians will find a wide variety of businesses, ranging from national restaurant chains like Starbucks and Dunkin Donuts to a neighborhood hair salon.

Among these businesses is Capitol Hill Bikes, which is being forced to close its doors after a nine-year presence in Capitol Hill.

On a typical day at the shop, there might be some discussions between knowledgeable people about bike building, while a customer decides to buy an extra bike lock as a way of saying “thank you” to the store that has catered to his cycling needs over the years.

“There used to be a store before Capitol Hill Bikes called Metropolis Bikes, and we still have customers coming in that bought their bike at Metropolis Bikes,” said the shop’s service manager, known affectionately to the clientele as “Toast.”

The store is currently only using its service center; the owners have a lot of space but not much to do with it.

“We used to have high-end road bikes also, so we had a fixed studio upstairs … and then people stopped looking for those nice high-end bikes,” said the service manager. “So then we had all this extra space that we were paying for that we weren’t using upstairs.”

The problem is, he explained, that the landlord will not let Capitol Hill Bikes keep a single locale — they currently occupy numbers 405 and 409 on 8th Street — and they cannot afford to keep all the space they do not need.

“We need to close down this location and move somewhere else,” said the manager. He does not know where the store will end up next, but the move-out date is the end of December.

Capitol Hill Bikes is not the only business struggling.

Another popular area of the Capitol Hill neighborhood is Eastern Market, which brings life to the neighborhood over the weekends, attracting tourists and District residents. Here, vendors sell produce and meat in booths and at outdoor farmers’ stands, and over the weekend it becomes the site of an outdoor market.

Across the street, Capitol Hill Books has been in business since 1990, yet according to the store’s owner, Jim Toole, high property taxes make it very hard to stay in business. Toole, who has a master’s degree from American University, has owned the bookstore since 1994, after he retired from the Navy.

Toole has certainly done his best in cramming books into the limited space: right now, the bookstore houses 20,132 books.

“In order to meet the requirements for two rentals — the upstairs and the downstairs — I’ve tried to go and put a book into every nook and cranny I can,” said Toole.

The owner is uncertain about how much longer the bookstore will be in business.

Toole said in addition to the impact of the economic downturn, he was dealt a “double whammy” when property taxes in the neighborhood increased and the clean-up from the Eastern Market fire restricted access to his store.

He said he has to sell 3,000 books a year “just to satisfy the city.”

Toole thinks the store’s future is limited, since he is unable to expand it. “Property taxes will drive me eventually out of town,” he said.